Reisman: Yonkers faces long, rough road on finances

Apr. 7, 2012

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Well, it’s official. Yonkers is broke and getting broker by the minute.

Other towns have problems, but compared to the woes confronting the “City of Hills,” they don’t amount to a hill of beans.

There was cruel symbolism last week when the city’s purchasing director showed up to a council meeting drunk, or so it was alleged. No explanation was given and the man was suspended for his indiscretion.

But you would need a few stiff drinks, too, if you were in charge of buying stuff in bulk for a city whose most reliable lender may soon be a loan shark.

I’m exaggerating, of course. Or am I?

For two days later the dreaded, yet hardly unexpected, truth came out. Yonkers is $89.3 million in the hole for fiscal year 2013 and is facing a $462 million budget deficit for three years after that.

These were the preliminary findings of a special panel that was appointed by Mayor Mike Spano to perform what amounts to an autopsy on the city’s fiscal corpse — a bleeding body politic riddled with one-shots, spin-ups and other short-term gimmicks as well as irresponsible borrowing to pay for skyrocketing pension obligations and property tax settlements.

The cause of death was not given, though it was clear that a culture of political malpractice had a lot to do with it.

Now the task is to bring the city back from the dead — a bit of imagery that befits this day of resurrection. Miracles are possible, even in the secular halls of government.

Spano has been in office for 90 days and change. And so far it seems that the best news he’s had is the savings on municipal rock salt owed to a non-existent winter. Not that those savings were inconsiderable in a city where there are many steep inclines.

During the first three months of the year the city’s already-ingrained image of corruption and cronyism was made worse by events that were largely out of Spano’s control. These included the guilty plea entered by the mayor’s older brother, Nick Spano, the lobbyist and former state senator who was nabbed for federal income tax fraud, and the month-long trial of former city Councilwoman Sandy Annabi and former city Republican Chairman Zehy Jereis who were convicted in the Ridge Hill bribery trial.

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As far as the new mayor was concerned, it didn’t help matters that Jereis was also a longtime political errand boy for Nick Spano as was the chief witness in the trial, attorney Anthony Mangone, who pleaded guilty in exchange for ratting on everybody.

But Mike Spano deserves some credit for attempting to clean up the city’s lousy image. Playing the role of the “new sheriff in town,” he named some high-profile figures to the city’s ethics board, an agency whose absence up til now has been as mystifying as the disappearance of Judge Crater.

He also ordered mandatory ethics training for all senior-level employees in the city. “For government to succeed, it must have the people’s trust,” Spano said at the time of the announcement. “I intend that going forward, there will be policies in place that will hold our employees to the level of standards in which they were hired.”

What the ethics training actually entails wasn’t spelled out. However, I suggest that the trainees should first be shown a picture of a giant cookie jar labeled, “Hands off.” Pretty simple.

Finally, Spano publicly chided the city’s former deputy mayor for padding his final paycheck, a maneuver he managed to legally pull off because of his expert knowledge of loopholes. Bathing in entitlement, the guy was offended when Spano outed him.

This proves nothing except that when the front of the house is on fire, there’s always somebody who feels completely justified in sneaking out the back door with the silverware.

It may be too soon to say how Mike Spano is doing. But he didn’t get to enjoy a honeymoon in his first 90 days. In fact he inherited a crisis, which was the word used twice by the financial commission in its brief interim report.